What storytellers are supposed to do

Being anxious is very much like being watched – by another, by your partner, by the world, by yourself. Anxiety is about sprinting ahead, spinning tales and stories and the long, long train of endless possibilities. It’s what storytellers are supposed to do; useful during the act of writing, not so useful in the living of a non-panicked life. Anxious people are in search of a scroll; a scroll that can be rolled out to tell us the meaning of all that has already happened and warn us of what is to come. We are imaginative people who carve something out of nothing and yet we’re still in search of the Oracle. No wonder we’re a little bit unsteady, a little bit on edge.